Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.” Oddly, when Sturgeon’s Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to ‘crap’.
On our First FTF we were almost second. Someone else had searched for it earlier in the day, before us, and logged a DNF. They are very new at this, only 4 finds so far, so I can understand how they might have missed it, the cache is covered in pine straw under a bush. At four finds I’m sure we would have had trouble too.
I did the right thing and called the cable company, so now I have all the HD Channels I can stand and none of those tiresome movie channels.
And check out this Greg Peltz’s blog for some more awesome “steampunk” Star Wars images. Hurry before he gets a cease and desist letter from George Lucas…
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 712
Le Tour started today with the Prologue Time Trial. A zippy little 5.5 mile jaunt around the Dutch town of Rotterdam. Lance Armstrong is in 4th place 22 secs back having completed .25% of the total mileage of the race. I know Lance is fourth because it was posted on Google News (from the New York Times) in the Entertainment Section.
We hit the road this morning with the intention to check out a possible location for the MMC Breakfast drive we lead later this month. Destination was the Ten Governor’s Cafe in downtown Edgefield. Of course there was some geocaching involved too. After we found a couple of them at Exit 11 of I-20 we were going to drive to Exit 1 where we had planned to start the breakfast run, but we were getting hungry, so we opted to head up the Bettis Academy Road to US25 thereby shortening the trip by 20 minutes or so. A couple miles up the road we passed by a small airport community where folks have a giant garage, otherwise known as hangers. We actually know somebody who lives in there, someone from our old Aiken Bike Club days. As we drove by we both noticed the small white building with a couple of cars out front that had a sign that said Airport Cafe! We’ve driven this way numerous times, but never noticed that before. We looked at each other questioningly and Donna said, “Turn around.”
There were maybe 6 tables for four inside and two of them had people at them. We picked one of our own and sat. It was two person operation, her (waitress/cashier) and him (cook), so service was kinda of hit or miss, but the food was hot and good tasting, plus cheap. It certain fit the bill of Club’s Breakfast Drive originator. We may be the biggest group they ever dealt with, but I think we found our spot. Next weekend we may go check out the Ten Governor’s Cafe as a back up plan.
We looped through Trenton (1 find), Edgefield (1 find, 1 DNF), back to North Augusta via Martintown Rd (3 finds) and on to the Greenway (5 finds.) One of the Greenway caches was the last of the Bread Crumb series, The End of the Trail — North Augusta. Donna wanted me to just say as little as possible so as not to raise the ire of the CO, but you know me:
Last Saturday we didn’t have the minutes portion of the hide’s coordinates (we did have the degrees & and the decimal minutes portions) and because we thought we had done this one earlier this year we walked right by the cache. After we gave up trying to remember where we were before we headed home. It was there we realized we *hadn’t* done this before and what we were remembering was the final of the Color Code Series…
I plotted out about 10 different combinations of possible locations of the final using any north & west minutes that kept us in North Augusta, but figured the best chance of finding it was near the end of the Greenway, close to where the Question Mark showed. And that is where it was.
Thanks for the series. My wife and I thoroughly it enjoyed it and will wonder for a very long time what the heck were those containers for the finals.
I hope I didn’t knock off the scab…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 714
Yesterday we were 10 for 11 on finding caches. We should have taken today off.
After yesterday’s ten finds we were at 480 for our total. I said, “Hey, let’s get 10 tomorrow and 10 on Monday and we’ll hit 500.” Ahhh, the best laid plans. There were 5 caches over on the Greenway in North Augusta that we still had to get, so I figured we would cruise down SC421 through the valley where there were 10 caches to try and get. For good measure I added two more along our route to the Greenway parking spot. We had a total of 17 on the list, surely we could come up with ten.
We have been avoiding the ones along 421 because most of the hides are near businesses and are micros in high muggle areas. Donna and I really enjoy the walk in the woods finds because there isn’t much chance of being seen and you don’t have to try and be stealthy. Figured we would be OK on an early Sunday morning, not much chance of too many people being out and about. The first place we stopped was at a small cafe. The restaurant was closed and the parking lot empty, but right next door was a very busy quick stop store. We had only half our attention on looking and the other half hoping nobody would call us on what we were doing.
It went downhill from there. Every time we would stop somewhere that appeared deserted, cars appeared like yellow jackets around a trash barrel in a picnic area. We missed the second one. We DNF’d the third and fourth. We drove right by #5 hoping to change our luck, like a batter in a hitting slump might change the way he ties his shoes. Didn’t work, we DNF’d the sixth. Donna just stayed in the car for number seven while I bumbled about. Good thing she did, as it gave her time to stare off 100 miles in the distance pondering our ineptitude, enabling her subconscious to spot the hide. Yippee, the streak was over.
Not for long though, as we promptly didn’t find the next three. We skipped the first one on the way into North Augusta as it was at a car wash and every bay was in use. The last one before the Greenway was a difficulty of 1 and a terrain of one. A person in a wheelchair found it 2 weeks earlier. We did not. So at that point we were the exact inverse of yesterday, we had missed 10 of 11.
Our funk continued on the Greenway as four of the five hides were by someone know for his creative containers and we have had trouble with his in the past. We missed 3 of what he called his “fantastic four” series.
Here is a representative of how bad we were at this caching thing today. The Greenway passes over a busy Martintown Road with a 75′ long metal bridge nicknamed the Greene Giant. There is a cache there by that name and because we needed all the help we could get, the first thing we did was read the hint because the last line of the cache description read: The hint is a give-away spoiler, so use only if necessary! Here is the hint: Very SW corner of the bridge, inside the fence, waist high. It still took us ten minutes to find the damn thing because we couldn’t figure out which way was southwest with a global positioning satellite receiver.
I consider us very lucky to have found the car where we had parked it, so we could drive home. Caching stats for today: 17 planned, 15 attempted, 12 DNFs, 3 finds and 2 abstaining.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 715
This morning as I opened the garage door there occurred a loud BANG! Over my head the garage door spring banged into the support bracket. I was headed out to wash the car, but instead I made a trip to Home Depot. Bought new springs and a couple of new eye bolts. I really needed just one to replace the one that got mangled when the spring smashed into it, but figured why should one new spring be jealous of the other over an old eye bolt.
Inside the box with the springs were two long pieces of wire that were probably there as some sort of safety thing, but the instructions on the box didn’t really spell out how they were to be used. I installed the new springs and because they were a little shorter that the current ones I had to adjust the cables a little. It wasn’t until then that I figured out how the cables worked. Trouble was to install the safety cables I would need to totally disassemble what I had just completed. That was not going to happen. I may have to engineer something to retro fit the safety wires. I got lucky this time because I didn’t have the safety wires and the spring broke on the end it did. If it had busted on the eye bolt end and not the pulley end it might have hit the door and bounced around instead of just slamming into the support.
The reason I was opening the garage door was to go out and change the Emperor’s oil and rotate his tires which I now proceeded to do, just a couple hours later. While I had the car up on jack stands with the wheels off, I did a couple of maintenance items. I have had a high pitched chirping noise that was only noticeable in the early morning when driving through our quiet neighborhood. It would totally disappear when I pushed in the clutch pedal. The most common cause of this is the clutch actuating fork vibrating against the slave cylinder’s operating rod. The cure for this to slap a bunch of grease on the fork where the rod hits it. Luckily I had some bicycle wheel bearing grease in the cabinet that fit the bill. The other thing was to check and see if the brake slider pins needed lubricating.
Last year when I had the stuck pin someone at work recommended using a copper based lubricant instead of the usual tube of whatever that you get at the auto parts store. I checked with the hive knowledge of the Miata.net forums and while I didn’t get a unanimous opinion that it was a great idea, I didn’t get enough negative comments to rule it out, so I decided to run a test, one side got the usual lube and the other got the copper stuff. Today when I checked them one side was fine, but the other was stuck pretty good. Guess which one was bad? Go ahead guess. Right, the one where I used the non-traditional copper based anti-seize lube. I could back out one pin by twisting and pulling. The other was going to need more persuasion, so I unbolted the bracket and locked in the bench vise. I grabbed an open ended wrench and a hammer and started to tap on the wrench to force the pin out. After about 3 or 4 taps is wasn’t moving, so I decided to hit it a bit harder when BANG! I hit my thumb. I did a little dance accompanied by some vocals before returning to the task where I did get finally get the pin out. I now have a pencil eraser sized black spot on my left thumbnail.
One pin was pretty scarred up and the hole in the caliber bracket the pin slides into wouldn’t come clean either. To fix this I cleaned up the easy to remove pin, a pin I had extra from last year’s brake job and I re-used last year’s bad bracket (which had been cleaned up and saw a brief stint as a napkin holder.) After getting everything all buttoned up I made a tour of the neighborhood to test out the brakes, they worked just fine. I am going to take the scarred up pin and bracket into work and drop them on the desk of the fellow who suggested the copper lubricant…
To finish off the Emperor’s spa day I gave him a bath and an interior vacuuming tonight.
I bet you’re wondering how we did geocaching today. We didn’t have a single DNF, of course we didn’t have a single find either because after our extreme up and down days on Saturday and Sunday we figured a day off might be good for our mental health.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 717
One of the vending machines at work has had a sign on it for a couple weeks now letting us know that there was going to be a price increase. Last week they put up a new sign on each of the machines that dispense chips and candy bars and the like, saying that on July 6th the items in the them would experience a slight price increase.
The standard bag of chips went from 70¢ to 85, the smaller bags went from 50¢ to 60 and the occasional $1 item went to $1.15. That is an increase of 21%, 20% and 15% respectively. A quick survey of co-workers on what percentage would they consider “slight” and 10% was the highest number I got, while fifteen per cent was what we would have called moderate and twenty & twenty-one per cent was considered bordering on substantial.
The drink and coffee machine prices remained the same.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 719
I’ve talked alot about email spam here, but I get comment span at the Life of Brian too. Anyone who has a blog (or for that matter a web page that allows comments) know what I’m talking about.
There are several ways to fight it and here at LOB we use three different methods. Firstly, commenting is closed on any post that is older than 14 days because the spammers love to seek out the posts that are off the front page, so you won’t notice them. The second line of defense is the very first time someone comments, they have to have their comment approved before it gets published. This keeps the spammers out because it usually comes from addresses like ariana_monet_zc@xrea.com or scarlett.mathasi@oyps.com, but the next time they comment it goes right out there. The third way is using a plug-in that comes with wordpress called Akismet. It won’t like most email spam fighters by comparing the incoming comment’s email address, IP address and looking for key words and phrases to dump them into queue where I can review them. In May it caught 34, in June 35 and so far this month 28. Sometimes I think I don’t get many comments here, so maybe I should strip the links and email addresses and post them because they can be quite interesting. This morning I had four:
You need to seriously write some more about this.
Coming right up!
A gink begins cutting his wisdom teeth the initially without surcease he bites eccentric more than he can chew.
Of course he does.
You cover to be present a self-motivated person who is willing to bulge down and cause through the workload of every calendar day. You cover to be present prompt to take on lot in life of in rank, you cover to be present willing to hear a ton of concepts and tips and tricks with the intention of want sort you thriving by the side of making money online, and if you sort out all of with the intention of, at that moment you want start to go with a complete stage revenue upcoming made known of this.
Huh?!?
Thanks for the awesome post!
You are very welcome…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 723
I ducked my head into the mailroom this morning on the off chance I might have got something. Turns out I did and so did everyone else. All the mail slots had new AT&T Real Yellow Pages® phone book. And just like I do every year when that happens, I have to rein myself in from running through the halls shouting, “The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!” I bet there are quite a few people around my age who fondly remember the 1979 movie The Jerk, starring Steve Martin, who have to fight off the same compulsion too.
Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here! Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing. Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 — Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity — your name in print — that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.
As I always do, I check to see if I’m in there. Yep. Not page 73 though, Bogardus, Brian & Donna appear on page 11.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 725
Got to 27b/6, sub titled “Go Away”, for some fun reading. You can while away several hours there (as I have done) reading very humorous bits and email exchanges that will make you literally LOL!
We got up at the usual time this morning and headed off to Edgefield to check out the breakfast place that we didn’t make it to last Saturday, the Ten Governor’s Cafe. After one small misdirection we made the 20 mile trip on a simply beautiful back road that dumps you onto the Edgefield downtown square under the watchful eye of a life-size bronze Strom Thurmond. Wouldn’t you know it, but the restaurant was closed for a week’s vacation and wouldn’t re-open until tomorrow. We are pretty sure we are going to use it, food untested, based solely on the great drive to get there, after all, we are a car club…
The moratorium on geocaching continues, we didn’t do any this morning having already found all we were going to last weekend and tomorrow morning we are going for a quick bike ride before the temperatures reach triple digits. We will then probably spend the rest of the day indoors watching le Tour, a Netflix movie (Frost/Nixon) and a couple of torrented TV shows or some Instant Watch movies or some old crappy movies that are playing on Starz or Encore.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 726
Someone recommended this movie to me, even told me it was watch it now on Netflix. Last Monday as I sat watching it on the laptop, my wife looked over at me and asked, “What you watching?” I kind of explained what it was, here is the Netflix blurb:
Eric Bana makes his directorial debut with this documentary about his biggest obsession: his Ford XB Falcon Coupe, aka “the Beast.” The actor examines his auto fixation and chronicles his attempts to compete in the treacherous Targa Tasmania race. The Beast has been by his side for more than 20 years — but can it endure this grueling five-day affair? Jay Leno, Dr. Phil McGraw and auto expert Jeremy Clarkson drop by to share their thoughts.
She said, “I want to see it too.” We both enjoyed it immensely. I did because I’m a car guy and she did because she’s married to a car guy or maybe because she had recently seen Eric Bana naked (we had watched the Time Traveler’s Wife the day before.) Seriously if you like cars, still remember your first car wistfully or have ever wanted to soup a car with an unlimited budget and then drive it like a mad man (or woman) on closed public streets, see this movie. Stream it if you are a Netflix member. Before you do, watch a lot of Fosters beer commercials, so you can learn to speak Australian. Eric was usually easy to understand, but his buddies who haven’t ever been anywhere outside of Melbourne could be a bit tricky sometimes. Maybe if you rent it, it’ll have American english subtitles…
When I went back to work on Tuesday I thanked James for telling me about this movie. He said, “What movie?” I could have sworn it was him as he usually visits on his afternoon break and we compare movies. James said maybe it was Chris and he’d add the movie to his queue.
Chris is another Netflix guy and we do occasionally compare movies. The trick with him is that our tastes are nearly the opposite of one another, so if he likes a movie, I’ll hate it and so on. Chris had no idea about Love The Beast either, but he’d add it to his queue. Hmmm, curious.
The next person I thought of was Bob, my manager, who has been know to trade recommendations with me every once and a while. Same story, he had never heard of it, but would put it in his queue. Now I’m really starting to wonder, who might have told me about the movie.
Ah, ha! Had to be Dave and Autumn from the Miata Club, also fellow Netflixers. We usually find some time during an event to talk about what we had recently watched and we had to see a baseball game with them the week before. I dashed off an email. Wasn’t us, came the reply, but it sounds interesting, we’ll add it to our queue.
I’m beginning to think I might have dreamed getting that recommendation.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 727
Several years ago it seemed like there was an abundance of people by the name of Robert who worked at The Valve Store™ and as a joke, myself and another coworker would always say, “Morning Bobby”, when we’d pass each other for the first time each day. His name is Joey and mine is, well duh, Brian, but we got a kick out of it.
Over the years the number of Roberts waned, Jims took over the top spot, yet we still kept up the ‘Morning Bobby’ routine. The number of folks named Jim hasn’t diminished any, but Bobs have made big advances again recently. My immediate supervisor is named Bob and his boss is named, yep, you guessed it, Bob. To differentiate between them they are sometimes referred to as Little Bob and Big Bob respectively. Our latest Industrial Engineer is also a Robert and usually went by Bob, but I think as a condition of employment, he had to willing to be known as Rob to avoid further confusion.
With them ceasing manufacturing at the home office in Florham Park, NJ we have had a few folks from up there make the transition to working here in South Carolina. The last two to join us are both named Bob.
Joey and I will may just start saying, “Morning Bobby”, whenever we pass anybody, because we will have a real good chance of being right.
Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 731
Here are six of the nine MMC cars that made the trip to Edgefield for breakfast today. I looks like the life-size statue of Strom Thurmond is orating around 110,000 words, perhaps recreating his famous filibuster, longest ever by a single senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length nonstop, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
As we arrived at the start point for the trip this morning the Emperor past the 110,000 milestone.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 739
Sorry. I had this nice long post reminiscing about where I was when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon 41 years ago today, but I don’t have time. I wasted the evening watching a so intentionally bad buddy cop TV show that *is* actually funny, The Good Guys and a so intentionally over the top show about cars that you don’t actually learn anything useful from it, Top Gear.
Maybe I’ll write that moon landing post next year (because we all know how emotional a 42nd anniversary can be.)
The new laptop has Windows 7 and I like it pretty well and decided that it was time to try it on the desktop computer as I stumbled into a $50 legal copy of the program. I only had two real problems with the install, one there is no Outlook Express for Win7 (or its predecessor Vista), so I needed a different desktop email client.
I have been using Outlook Express for email at home for about as long as I have been using a computer. It has only been around since 1996, but it just seems like forever. I can’t remember what I used for email prior to OE, maybe Pegasus Mail (which according to Wikipedia has been around since 1990 and is still in use today), but it didn’t come up in my web search for a replacement. Thunderbird seemed to be the top pick, but folks complained of issues importing email from OE. To test it out, I downloaded, installed it and tried it out. Everything went smooth for me, so I learned how to export the new email data and how to restore it for after the the 7 install.
The second issue came about after I had installed Windows 7. My old sound card was no longer being supported and the last official drivers for it were for XP. There was a small speaker icon in the task tray with a bright red X through it. That would never do. Google searched turned up traces of possible drivers, but I had no luck locating them. Looks like I might have to buy a new sound card (like I did 7 years ago when I first got this PC.) I was sort of surprised by that development because I had downloaded Micrsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser software and it didn’t flag that as an issue.
It did flag a couple other things, so I decided to try and get some drivers for those items to see if I needed anymore new hardware, because if it did I might just revert back to XP. Somehow, don’t ask because I don’t remember how, but while getting those drivers a box popped up with a list of attempted driver updates. The sound card was listed and and lo and behold it found a driver. I have sound.
Now comes the task of reloading all the programs I normally use, but I should be all finished by tomorrow.
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 750
We got up early again today to go for a bike ride before it got too hot. We headed cross town to DD, so I could get some of their fabulous coffee. I headed inside while Donna walked next door to get the Sunday paper. For her I ordered one plain bagel toasted with butter on the side and a water to drink. I got a small coffee and a coffee cake muffin. By the time I had completed the transaction there was a person standing there handing me small bag with the toasted bagel. I sat at the table with Donna and we split up the paper and waited for the rest of the meal. And waited. After waiting a bit more, I went up to see what was taking so long to pour a coffee and take a muffin off the shelf. As I stood up and headed to the counter I heard Donna call my name. There was a tray sitting at the end of the counter with a water, a coffee and a muffin.
How long had it been there? Couldn’t have someone said, “Your breakfast is ready sir.”? We were the only people waiting for food…
The Emperor hasn’t moved all day.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 750
It got crowded in heaven, so, for one day it was decided only to accept people who had really had a bad day on the day they died. St. Peter was standing at the pearly gates and said to the first man, “Tell me about the day you died.”
The man said, “Oh, it was awful. I was sure my wife was having an affair, so I came home early to catch her with him. I searched all over the apartment but couldn’t find him anywhere. So I went out onto the balcony, we live on the 25th floor, and found this man hanging over the edge by his fingertips. I went inside, got a hammer, and started hitting his hands. He fell, but landed in some bushes. So, I got the refrigerator and pushed it over the balcony and it crushed him. The strain of the act gave me a heart attack, and I died.”
St. Peter couldn’t deny that this was a pretty bad day, and since it was a crime of passion, he let the man in.
He then asked the next man in line about the day he died. “Well, sir, it was awful,” said the second man. “I was doing aerobics on the balcony of my 26th floor apartment when I twisted my ankle and slipped over the edge. I managed to grab the balcony of the apartment below, but some maniac came out and started pounding on my fingers with a hammer. Luckily I landed in some bushes. But, then the guy dropped a refrigerator on me!”
St. Peter chuckled, let him into heaven and decided he could really start to enjoy this job.
“Tell me about the day you died?”, he said to the third man in line.
“OK, picture this; I’m naked, hiding inside a refrigerator…”
Last night was the premier episode of Season 4 of TDTVS2 and we here at the Bogardus household spent the weekend prepping for the event. On Saturday we watched episodes 1 & 3 of season three and then on Sunday we watched episodes 6, 9 & 13.
At the appointed hour of the premier, 10:00 EDT, we went to bed.
Got up this morning, started downloading the torrent and left for work. Came home from work and had dinner in front of the TV.
At the end of last year they were running their new agency, created from the ashes of Sterling Cooper, out of a hotel room. this season starts several months later and they now have a floor in the Time/Life building (and telling clients they have two) with a conference room full of mismatched office chairs in a circle around a non existent table.
The episode seemed jumbled and out of sorts and just maybe that was an intentional tone set by the producer because it perfectly represented Don Draper’s life, both personally and professionally.
Now after an hour of digesting the show I’m beginning to appreciate it. It started out with Don being interviewed by an advertising magazine which he does it reluctantly and it shows in the published piece. They want him to do another interview, this time with the Wall Street Journal, but he is uncomfortable and begs off. For the next 30 minutes negative things happen all around him, and to him, until he blows his top at a client and is so mad he boots them out the door. This flips a switch making him realize that he needs to turn his act around, so he agrees to the WSJ interview. The last scene of the show is him talking to the Journal reporter and he is the charming, engaging Don Draper we all love and want to be.
Can’t wait until next week.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 751
After the Windows 7 install the PC seemed just a touch more sluggish doing certain things than it had under XP. I thought it odd because I had 2GB of RAM which was double the minimum requirement. So I downloaded a memory test program and ran it to see if I had a bad stick of RAM or something. When it started up it reported I had 1024M of RAM. Yikes! One stick is not working. On further investigation, it turns out that 3 years ago I upgraded the RAM with a kit that consisted of two 512M sticks and that Dell says that is the maximum amount this PC can handle.
A little bit of internet sleuthing comes up with the fact that the motherboard in my Dimension can indeed handle 2GB and a page that gives me a list of memory manufacturers with part numbers that folks have been successful using to break the one gig barrier, so I ordered 2 sticks of WINTEC 1GB 184-Pin DDR 400 SDRAM from NewEgg. it was suggested that I upgrade my BIOS and that went off without a hitch. Now I just need to go wait by my mailbox…
The title of this post is a quote from computer book author, Janice Rice Howd, from her book, Exchange System Administration (1999). It is based on the quote, “You can never be too rich or too thin.” which is attributed to Wallis Simpson who was obviously thin enough to ensnare three rich men with the objective to test the first part of that statement, the third of which even abdicated the British crown for her.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 756
If you have been following the countdowns on the right-hand sidebar here LOB you will have noticed two changes in the last week. The first was last Sunday when Season 4 of Mad Men premiered and its counter dropped off the page. The second just happened tonight when the counter for the New Miata jumped from 123 to 484.
Miata #1, the 1990 Mariner Blue A Package, lasted 6 years before being traded in. Number two, a 1995 Laguna Blue B Package, stuck around for 8 years before being traded in. Miata #3, our current 2003 Garnet Red LS, was assumed to stay with us the average of the lengths of service of the first 2 cars, seven years, and be traded in on a 2010 model this November. That is now not going to happen, The Emperor will be with us for at least another year.
The main reason for this, we like to say publicly, is the car is not available in a suitable shade of blue. The first two Miatas were blue, and while we have grown to like the current red/maroon shade, we have our hearts set on blue car this time. The current Miatas do come in blue, something called Stormy Blue, but it is too dark, almost Navy Blue and not to our liking.
But the main reason is neither one of us like the new and “improved” third generation of the car. It is only a couple inches longer or wider, but appears relatively huge in comparison. I heard the style of the car in the first couple of years of the 3rd generation compared to an angry bar of soap and I had to agree. They tweaked the looks of front end last year and now it reminds me of a bar of soap with a Mr Potato Head mouth stuck on it. And it is not just the exterior, we both don’t care for the inside either. The doors are taller, so that leaning your arm on the window sill leaves your elbow pointing up. That, along with the taller seats placed lower in the car gives you the feeling of riding in a bathtub. As a “bonus” the new engine routed the exhaust header in such a manner that it intrudes on the passenger foot well and steals precious space for the navigator’s usual complement of tools.
The current rumors on the Miata.net forums call for the forth generation of the car, which is supposed to be smaller and lighter, to appear as 2012 model which means it might come to market in late 2011, so we wait. If worse comes to worse and a new model doesn’t appear next fall, maybe they will add a nice bright blue to the Miata’s paint palette on the last of the 3rd gen cars. Or maybe by then the oft rumored Volkswagen BlueSport will actually exist and it will be a worthy competitor to the Miata.
The post title alludes to an oriental saying that is a loosely translated English phrase used in several oriental countries as an expression used to wish long life to the Emperor.
Started down, went up, back down, back up, down still again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 760
We went out geocaching this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks. I had a map with about a dozen caches picked out, but we only managed 4. No we didn’t DNF the other 8, but merely never got to them. There were two new ones along the Boyd Pond Bike Trail south of town. We had done the four caches around the pond last September and we swore we would come back and walk the trail again soon, but never did. Now was our opportunity. Went the more direct route to the cache and opted for the “scenic”, windy way out and ended up walking 4.2 miles total. and quite a 4.2 miles it was.
Turned on the computer this morning and the relatively recent Samsung SyncMaster 2233SW Monitor flashed its display for a second and then went black. Rebooted and it did the same thing while loading the bios, so it wasn’t Windows 7. The updated Bios from the other day? Doubtful. Had to be either video card or monitor. I let the PC boot up and I could make the display come on for a second by turning the monitor off and then back on. Trying to work like that would be very time consuming and annoying after a very short time. To be sure it was the monitor’s fault and not the video card I plugged a VGA cable into the laptop and tried to used the monitor as a second display, but got a the same problem, a brief glimpse of a desktop and then black.
Checked the internet for possible quick fixes, but found none. I did find the the monitor carried a 1 year parts and labor warranty. We bought it on June 14th last year which made it 1.13 years old. to Quote Agent 86, “Missed it by that much Chief.” After lunch we went to Staples to buy a replacement. In our price range there was a Dell and 2 different Samsungs. We picked the Dell, after all the Dell monitor that originally came with the PC lasted 6 years and the Samsung only did a little over a year. The Dell comes with a one year warranty and on the way out the salesman tried to sell us a one year extended warranty for $25. Donna was sorely tempted, but I talked her out of it. I did make a deal with with her, if this Dell only makes it just over the one year mark before crapping out, I would opt for every extended warranty ever offered me.
Finished up Season 2 Disc 6 of Law & Order this after noon. We love seeing the folks who were cutting their acting chops on the show way back in the early 90 and the ones who make one show guest starring plots. The final two episodes on the disc treated us to each of George Costanza’s parents Jerry Stiller on one show and Estelle Harris on the other. We also got Sam Rockwell in only his 10th credited role. We also got a very young Sabrina Llyod, AKA Natalie from Sports Night. The second to last show was the first ever appearance of Leslie Hendrix as the coroner, Dr. Elizabeth Rodgers, who I bet is very thankful for Dick Wolf as she has had pretty steady work since then playing that role. She has done 142 episodes of the original Law and Order, along with 104 episodes of Law and Order Criminal Intent, 9 episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and even one appearance on the short lived Law & Order: Trial By Jury.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 761
On our First FTF we were almost second. Someone else had searched for it earlier in the day, before us, and logged a DNF. They are very new at this, only 4 finds so far, so I can understand how they might have missed it, the cache is covered in pine straw under a bush. At four finds I’m sure we would have had trouble too.
